ambiguously love
by question the corpus
Summary: Cuddling to fend off the cold sometimes isn't enough. [CroMa. Ambiguous gender Crona; pwp oneshot.]


**AN: **As I can never quite decide what I headcanon Crona's gender identity as, here's a challenge I set myself: writing CroMa _without_ any biological pointers. Post-anime.

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**ambiguously love**

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Outside, it's cold – the year is fading, and with it fades any semblance of reasonable weather. Snow creeps and writhes through the air past their walls, slinking stealthily inside. But _Crona's_ warm, and they're resting with one body atop the other, blankets aplenty surrounding them.

Of course, Maka's latest bright idea might have something to do with the temperature, but she can hardly be blamed for it. Having Crona beneath her – open, inviting, oh so _soft_ – makes it difficult for her to stay still, writhing and winding. It's because she's comfortable. _Too_ comfortable. The scent of Crona's hair is overwhelmingly sweet.

Strong hands, sword-wielding hands, rise to grip Maka's sides, as though scolding her for being so wiggly. Maka props herself up on her elbows and stares down to take in Crona's expression: bitten lip, furrowed brow. The perpetual state of unease Maka would gladly kiss away...

...if she wasn't currently being told what to _do_.

Huffing, Maka wiggles her hips to dislodge Crona's hands, the blankets above her shifting as she does so. It slides to gather across the small of her back, curved and bare and susceptible to frosting over in this weather – but of all the things Crona isn't so embarrassed around these days, it's nudity.

Blood-heat flows better when clothes aren't in the way. Maka lowers herself once more, lazily pressing her mouth to Crona's shoulder, head against neck. Crona's breathing is (predictably) _laboured_, but that's just anxiety talking.

Her human mattress takes to holding her again, arms hesitant in their encirclement of her middle, and the slightest sigh escapes her lips. It sweeps only across skin, leaving a patchwork of gooseflesh; she marvels at the sight. Crona is alive and responsive beneath her (alive no matter what), and their lazy winter-noon nap is only growing all the more frustrating.

Maka's hips move again, more of their own accord, rocking softly down against Crona's own. She's not sure what she wants – to get closer, to gather more reactions, to hear that nervous breathing hitch instead. Crona squeezes her, stifling the most baffled little mewl... but no protest follows it.

So Maka grins. She aligns their hips again, hands bracing her against Crona's shoulders, and this time she moves only to grind.

A tap to the arm is the thanks she gets – it's as close as Crona comes to protesting. Anyone would be speechless with a Maka between their legs, and she's pushing down slowly, achingly, until their cores rub together without quite _connecting_.

Youth brings with it the curse of enthusiasm, so it doesn't take much to make Maka wet. She raises her head to watch Crona's expression, her back arching up and down, undulating, with her pace quickening each time until the grind becomes a glide. It's Crona's face that makes her move: all wide eyes and open mouth, slipping into a state of glazed repose. The surprised _moue_ of Crona's lips emits tense puffs at first until, _finally_, that hitch of breath meets Maka's ears as music would.

She bites her lip. She'd wanted to tease, but now her body is awake – alive to its willing partner, enveloped in embrace with the promise of acceptance. Maka frowns, finding her hips quite intent to continue rutting against Crona, and it feels _so good_. It's scratching an itch of her own making, but she can't seem to stop.

Every rub gets her precisely where she wants to be got, a smooth, swift stroke of warm friction. The little bursts of pleasure aren't quite enough to stop her from burying her face insistently against Crona's neck, naturally, as her wondrous inhibitions finally catch up with her – but she knows, at least, that Crona's enjoying it. The thrum of a rabbit-quick heartbeat is nestled beneath Crona's skin, and Maka gravitates towards the sound while Crona's arms tighten their hold, keeping her fondly close before she's taken aback by hips _rising_ to meet her own.

Maka is tempted, for a moment, to look up again in surprise, but she knows Crona wouldn't appreciate it. Gazing sickeningly into each other's eyes is something they can't do when they do things like _this_, when they're panting and scrabbling and bringing each other to the edge.

That really would be embarrassing.

She tries to keep neat and orderly, as she always does, but the rhythm that takes her is something primal, not willed by her mind but willed by the fire in her belly. She's keenly aware that Crona is ready to do anything Maka might ask, readily spread beneath her, but Maka isn't like that: she wants this to be caring, mutual, because Crona means so much to her. And she's just as new to sex as Crona is.

Crona is all too aware of this, which is why they're soon kissing – eyes squeezed shut, of course, cheeks flushed with more than just arousal. Maka's hazy mind, overrun with calculating her next sporadic thrust, can't figure out who instigated it, but when their tongues curl shyly together, she realises she doesn't care.

Instead, Maka lets herself slot against Crona like a puzzle piece: they move together, and that's all, Maka's hands fisting the bedsheets either side of Crona's frame while Crona's legs come to wrap around her like she's going somewhere. It's not in Crona's nature to make much sound – _not allowed, locked up, mother isn't one for noise_ – but the little _nghs_ that do escape guide Maka's movements, prompting her to meet every shove with a rolling buck of her own.

When Crona comes, there's no such reservation. It's a choked cry Maka is only too happy to draw out: her last decisive grind is a laborious, lingering thing, urging every last wave of it from Crona's body until it's almost enough to hurt. Maka feels herself _throb_ at the realisation of what she's doing, her limbs trembling before she topples, whimpering, into waves of pleasure and passion and temporary oblivion.

She's still aware of a hand rising to touch her, stroking up past her ear. Every time she comes with Crona's fingers threaded through her hair, she falls a little closer to being in love.

When they are done (again lying one atop the other because they don't have the _energy_ to move), they're a sticky mess, lusty rivulets trickling to a stop down Maka's thighs. Crona is quivering, but contentedly so, shivering out the last dregs of whatever Maka's touch inflamed on the inside – while Maka is too boneless to be moving at all.

An uncomfortable damp patch will soon form beneath them, but she doesn't want to try rolling away from her partner. Not just yet. She's suddenly _sleepy_, and that's only made worse when the blanket suddenly comes to rest over her again. Shakily so.

She emits a pleased little hum, her _thank-you_ to Crona, because she can't find it in herself to speak, either. With Crona finally _relaxing_ beneath her (a novelty in itself), and with her skin taken by the warmth of afterglow, the winter beyond their window no longer seems to bother her.

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**-x-**


End file.
